When a serviceman or servicewoman hands back their ID card and walks out of the barracks gate for the last time, they become something entirely new. Not former military, not ex-forces. A civvy. It’s a word every veteran knows instantly, and it’s the word that the founders of a new quarterly magazine launching this month want to plant like a flag.
CIVVY launches in print and digitally on 29th May, and the ambition behind it is pretty simple: to be the publication that Britain’s two million veterans never had.
“When you’re serving, you’ve got the RAF, Royal Navy and Soldier magazines,” says a co-founder of the title, an Army veteran. “But when you leave, there’s no single publication that really pulls everything together. Lifestyle, money, finances, travel. Just living life as a veteran.”
It’s a fair point, and the veteran media landscape bears it out. There are titles that cover resettlement and the jobs market, but nothing that’s really tried to take on the full picture of life after service. The team behind CIVVY are also very clear about what kind of publication it’s going to be.
“We’re not a MoD mouthpiece. We’re not a charity newsletter. We’re telling the stories from the mouths of veterans, for veterans, without holding back. We tell the truth, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad. We’re not here to champion the government. We’re here to challenge the government and praise them where praise is due.”
The magazine is the product of an idea that first came up back in 2013, sat dormant for years, then resurfaced with real momentum around two years ago. The co-founder got in touch with an experienced publishing professional whose credits include editing some of the British Army’s most respected titles, and together with an experienced magazine designer, the small three-person team started turning it into something real.
The name took some working out too, with an early working title dropped in favour of something that would land immediately with the audience. “It is something instantly familiar,” the co-founder explains. “Everyone should know exactly who it’s for if you’re a veteran. It’s who you become the minute you hand your ID card back and your kit is handed back into stores and you walk out the gate.”
Issue one has some serious firepower with Bear Grylls, who served as a reservist and with the SAS before becoming one of Britain’s most recognisable television personalities, on the front cover talking about what being a civilian means to him. There’s also a regular SAS veteran known from a prominent television series about special forces selection. And arguably the most striking piece in the issue comes from a British Army veteran who married a Ukrainian woman, moved to Ukraine before the full-scale Russian invasion, joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was captured and tortured by Russian forces, and has since rebuilt his life as a motivational speaker.
A former Regimental Admin Officer now working as a financial advisor will be a regular contributor too, covering pensions, investments, mortgages and savings. It’s an area the co-founder clearly cares about.
“So many people who leave service struggle. When you’re in the military, so much gets done for you. And then when you leave and you’ve suddenly got to do all this yourself, you’re like, where do I start?”
When asked what he wants veterans to actually feel when they pick the magazine up, the co-founder doesn’t hesitate.
“I want them to get that feeling that they’re back with their oppos. That esprit de corps that maybe faded a little since leaving service. I want that to be reignited within them, and I want them to feel part of the community that they’re always a part of, and always will be.”
The magazine will go out direct to subscribers and can be ordered on their website. The co-founder’s measure of success at the end of year one is pretty straightforward: that the vast majority of veterans in the UK have either picked up a copy or at least heard about it from someone they served with.
Here at the UK Defence Journal we think CIVVY has been a long time coming. We cover defence every day and we see the appetite that exists within the veteran community for something that speaks to them straight, without an agenda. There’s a real gap where this magazine is going and we’ll be following its progress with interest. We wish the team well.
CIVVY launches on 29th May. For more information visit civvymagazine.co.uk
